No #Aadhaar – Identity Crisis For ‘Missing’ Karur Village #UID

KARUR: Talk about losing one’s identity. Villagers of Kuchipatti in Kulithalai taluk were shocked to know that their village is not included in the National Population Register (NPR) when they tried to obtain the Aadhaar card recently.

As many as 20 families and 128 people reside in the village near Thogamalai in Thalinji panchayat. As the Aadhaar number will help them get access to several services and government schemes, the villagers have been struggling to get the Aadhaar card for the past two years.

Local tahsildar Ravichandran was at a loss to explain how the village slipped out of the NPR map. Ditto Thalinji village administrative officer Aravind. They are now scrambling to fix the problem and hope to do it by next year.

The villagers said that when neighbouring villagers were flocking to take photos for the Aadhaar card, they were not given tokens to appear at the Aadhaar venue. But they believed the promise of revenue officials to take immediate action in the issue and cancelled a protest against the district administration. As there was no progress in the issue, they approached the district administration on Saturday only to be told that their village name was not in the NPR. They had also submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister.